


Repaid

by ProlixInSpace



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Dean and Claire Are A Chaos Duo, Dean and Claire Bonding, Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, M/M, Rescue Missions, Road Trips, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27614321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProlixInSpace/pseuds/ProlixInSpace
Summary: “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”― William Goldman , The Princess BrideAlmost everything has been happily settled after the events of Inherit the Earth, except for one thing. Dean and Claire take a road trip to tie up that loose end.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 71





	Repaid

**Author's Note:**

> I SWORE I was not going to write ANY more Supernatural fanfiction until it was over, and here I am, days from the finish line, and my brain betrays me like this!? I just loved the idea of Dean and Claire strapping on their chaos shoes and going to save Cas from The Empty and couldn't stop thinking about it until I wrote it down.
> 
> So, enjoy this shameless cheese.

“I  _ swear, _ ” Dean grumbles, dropping the  _ to god  _ that wants to come out of his mouth for reasons he isn’t entirely comfortable spending a lot of time on, “it’s like some kind of… dust hydra. I wipe a spot and there’s twice as much the next time I look.”

Sam makes a noise in the back of his throat that starts as a laugh and then gets covered with a cough that’s only mostly fake, thanks to the dust. “Three times.”

“What?” 

“Nothing,” Sam says, _ obviously  _ about to continue talking anyway. “Just… haven’t seen you like this in awhile.”

“Like... what?”

“I don’t know, nesting?”

Dean opens his mouth to say it’s not like that, but that’ll just make Sam more confident that it  _ is  _ like that, when for once he’d be telling the truth. It really, truly isn’t. If the misunderstanding makes Sam happy, or comfortable, he’ll just let it sit, but if anything, it’s the  _ opposite _ of nesting, whatever the word for that is. He cleans and launders and organizes and rearranges, searching for a feeling he hasn’t had since…

Well, since everything.

Nothing helps. He makes an offhand joke about Sam’s shed hair, something about tumbleweeds, and how half the things he most wants to burn, bury, or box up in a more  _ permanent  _ way, to free up the shelves. 

_ Free up,  _ that’s closer. He’s trying to make  _ space _ for something. Expansive as they are, every room feels like it's hemming him in, like he’s trapped inside a collapsing lung. There’s only so much driving he can do, and just yesterday he caught himself pulling over, getting out, and wandering into a dry yellow field just so he could get some air. 

Since when was the  _ car _ claustrophobic?

At some point, he’s gotta tell him. He can’t just disappear.

“Thinking about taking a trip.” Dean winces as soon as the words are out, less subtle than he wanted them.

“Oh yeah?” Sam doesn’t look up from his computer. “Where are we going?”

“Not we.”

“O...kay.” That gets Sam’s attention. He doesn’t miss a beat, but he does look up, all easy patience. “Where are  _ you  _ going?”

What, did he think Sam wasn’t going to ask? Now he has to say it. 

“Mmr--Southdakota?” He half-mumbles, attempting  _ general and nonchalant, _ but it’s clear he’s missed the mark when Sam closes his laptop and sits up looking like he’s just found a bomb he has to defuse. 

“Who called?” Sam cuts to the chase. 

Dean hesitates before he says, “Claire.” 

Sam’s analysis is a whip-crack, Dean watches him visibly put the pieces together at lightspeed. Kid would have made  _ such  _ a lawyer. Still could, if he wanted to.

He’s expecting,  _ Dean, are we gonna talk about this?  _ Or:  _ If it could be done safely, Jack would already have done it.  _ Or maybe:  _ Remember our agreement?  _

For his part, Dean’s already got a comeback for that last thing on the tip of his tongue about how Sam’s end of the bargain was never  _ tested.  _ Eileen showed up at the bunker door not 72 hours after Jack walked off, found them not at home, and inspired some of the most illegal driving of Dean’s life. Problem  _ apparently _ solved, no need for forbidden theatrics.

Donna, Charlie, Stevie, all of them, even Becky and her family, all whole and fine, just late to the party and a touch rattled, as if Chuck tucked the Winchester favorites somewhere secret, somewhere an extra step removed for safekeeping.

It’s strange to think that the author of their existence  _ feared _ what they were capable of, before the end. 

Capable of anything, except one thing, apparently.

“Okay,” Sam says, which was not on the bingo card. “You’re… sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

It’s amazing how Sam can pack all that unspoken meaning into ten innocuous words. One sentence, so dense it might as well be a neutron star with a question mark at the end.

Dean tries to match him pound for pound when he says, “I’ll keep you posted.”

Apparently, Sam just trusts him not to do anything they shook on not doing, or at least, he’s trying to act like he does in the hope that Dean will live up to that trust. 

Which he will. 

Probably. 

The next time he’s on the road, the car doesn’t feel too small anymore, the walls around him held up with possibilities.

He wants to say he’s tried everything, but he hasn’t. He’s prayed like crazy to anyone he thinks might listen, and he’s researched when he doesn’t think Sam is looking, but he hasn’t tried  _ everything.  _ Sure, he could break the  _ agreement _ \-- get away with it even, maybe, but he always thinks he can get away with shit when he tries it and as stupid as he knows he is, he still sees clearly exactly what that would mean. 

Whatever he said before he died, he’s not sure Cas would ever forgive him if he started the whole damn cycle back up again, a thing Dean knows because he’s already having a tough time forgiving Cas for  _ his  _ part in it, for making a deal behind his back, dropping a twenty-ton weight on him, and then dying and making him carry it.

In short, Cas is a self-righteous, arrogant, stupid, son of a bitch, with whom Dean has had no choice to admit to himself by now that he is madly, moronically in love, and it’s just  _ the worst. _

_ “Happiness isn’t in the having  _ my ass,” he mutters to himself as he changes lanes.

If nothing else, Dean has to rescue him so he can tell him off. Hell, he’s been thinking almost twenty-four seven about what he’d say, at least when he’s not busy praying, cleaning, drinking, and standing out in fields quietly panicking.

_ “You can’t stop me,”  _ Claire told him, her voice tinny on the speakerphone.  _ “I already did it. So, if you don’t want it wasted, come and meet me.” _

Dean wants to believe that if she _ hadn’t  _ already done the whole grace-extraction thing, he  _ would  _ have stopped her, or at least tried to. He desperately wants to think that about himself, that he would protect her, that he wouldn’t let her put herself in danger to get Cas back. 

The thing is, he isn’t really  _ entirely  _ sure. 

Incisive as she’s always been, she’s taken the choice away from him. Now it’s: waste the grace or don’t, and that, at least, has an obvious answer. 

He’ll explain it to Sam when he’s got Cas. The last thing he wants to do is get him excited (or worse,  _ pitying) _ for no reason. There’s no guarantee this will even work, or help, or do anything of use, and Dean would rather not look at those damp, sympathetic eyes when the plan fails. Better to just keep it to himself until it’s done.

Sioux Falls comes up on him seemingly before he knows it, his thoughts occupied entirely with going over and over the nothing that he knows about this singular lead. 

He has to go through Jody first, which is to be expected.

“Before you say anything,” Dean starts, squinting into the sunset behind her “I didn’t tell her to--”

“I know,” Jody says, a reassuring hand on his elbow. “I did.”

“You…”

“Well, I didn’t _ tell _ her to. I didn’t  _ want  _ her to. But it’s like drugs, right?” She runs a hand through the silver crop of her hair. “They’ll do it anyway, so you want them to do it at home, not in some dirty warehouse somewhere.”

“You helped her.” At the back of his mind, Dean’s faintly relieved that life isn’t  _ too  _ normal now.

“I held the needle.” Jody doesn’t look at him when he says it. 

“You know this probably won’t work.”

“I know. She knows. No one was getting any sleep until we tried, though,  _ that  _ much was clear. Besides, she’s her own grown woman, much as I hate to admit it.”

“She’s here?”

“In the car. That was the bargain: I help her get the grace out, she lets me talk to you alone first. Way I see it, it’s like going hiking in the woods. You always want someone to know where you went, and when you might be back, right? So, lay it on me. What’s the worst case scenario?”

“Well,” Dean knows better than to sugar coat it. “Absolute worst? I piss off a cosmic entity.”

“So: pretty much the usual.” Their shared chuckle is a balloon on a lead weight.

“If it makes you feel any better, it’s a lot more likely it’ll just be a big goose egg,” Dean says. “Funny, she made a deal with me, too.” 

_ We get him back together _ .  _ You’re not the only one he left behind. _

“She’s getting good at those. _ Pretty  _ sure I know who to blame.” There’s more affection than sting underneath. “Keep me updated, yeah?”

Dean goes to shake on it, but Jody pulls him into a tight hug. Once she releases him, she waves, and Claire gets out of one car and walks past Dean to get into the other with little more than a pursed smirk and a flash of a glowing blue vial on a necklace chain, tugged out from between layers of shirts.

“Absolutely not,” Dean says when he finds her lingering in the driver’s seat. “Not a chance, not now, not ever. Scoot.”

She scoots, not without a touch of resentment and… is that skepticism? As if he hasn’t seen her driving.

“So?” She says. 

“Like we talked about. I know a place in Omaha, we can get some shuteye and make a plan.”

This, they agree on immediately. Of course Jody’d be happy to host them for the night, but there would be  _ questions  _ neither of them yet want to answer. Better to stay focused.

If Claire has any complaints about Zeppelin, she doesn’t voice them. She doesn’t voice much of anything, as it happens, leaving Dean floundering. Content as he usually is to cut the chatter, this is not the kind of silence he’d have with Sam, or Cas. This is a silence that’s waiting for something.

That or he’s anxious and projecting. Hard to rule that out. 

“So,” he attempts, “how’s uh… Kaia?”

Claire shifts, snickers, and then barks a cackle. “An infinity of options, and you still went with  _ awkward-uncle-at-family-reunion.” _

“Hey--”

“Don’t pretend you want to talk about Kaia. I mean, okay, she’s fine -- probably handling things better than I am -- but c’mon. Stop treating me like I’m  _ other people _ .”

“Excuse me?” Dean keeps his eyes on the road, but he frowns as if he’s looking at her.

“Now you’re playing stupid, too? C’mon. How did Cas die, again?”

“I  _ told _ you--”

“How dumb do you think I am? How dumb do you think  _ Sam  _ is? I haven’t checked, but I’d bet you every weapon I own he’s not buying it either. This is  _ never  _ going to work if you don’t--You know what, screw it, I’ll use Castiel’s grace to plant a tree or something. He’d like that. This is pointless.”

Dean swerves onto the shoulder and crushes the brake. An un-belted, lounging Claire jerk-slides her knees right into the glove compartment. She scrabbles back up the leather seat. 

“The fuck was that for? Jesus. I knew you’d have a stick up your ass about it but man, something  _ really  _ must have gone down.”

“Claire--”

“I hate to play this card, but seriously, you don’t think he’d want me to know the truth?”

“Probably thought you already did,” Dean mutters under into his hands as he rubs the frustration off his face. 

He resigns himself, because damn if she might not be right. The last thing he wants is to walk away having failed and have to wonder forever if it was his own fault, if there was some information that could have made it work and he didn’t share it. Besides, this is part of trying, right? 

It  _ started  _ with turning down killing Chuck, but he’s determined not to let it end there. 

Claire deserves the truth more than most.

“Cas’ deal was--it wasn’t even  _ recent.”  _ He leans his forearms on the steering wheel. “He did it to save Jack. Thing is, he was kind of public enemy number one, as far as The Empty was concerned.”

Claire’s attitude is like an airbag: having done its job, it begins to deflate. “If it hated him, why’d it help him? Why’d it give him what he wanted?”

“Near as I can tell, it just saw an opportunity to be a bigger douchebag than it already was. Said it wouldn’t take him until he…  _ experienced a moment of true happiness.” _

“Wait, wait,” Claire shakes her head, clearing something from her mental etch-a-sketch. “When was this? You said it wasn’t recent, when did this  _ happen? _ How long was he walking around with this?”

“Not gonna pretend I’ve been keeping good track of time lately, but… months, at least.”

She pushes her hair out of her face. “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“So what was it? I mean, before, you said he summoned The Empty to get it to take Billie, that she had you cornered, what the hell could have made him happ--wait.”

Dean closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Even stupid little things have a tendency to send him right back in time -- smells, colors, sounds. Sam dropped the cooler on the kitchen counter a couple days ago and that metallic  _ clang _ reminded Dean enough of the sound of the dungeon door that he just about jumped out of his skin.

Actually having to talk about it is a hundred times worse. 

“He said…” Dean chokes on it. He doesn’t look at Claire, but straight out the windshield instead, at the cars passing them by. Crying’s not happening, he’s not going there. Breathe, swallow, and  _ then  _ talk. Rip the bandaid off. “He said he loved me. And that was it. The Empty was on him before I could say a damn thing.”

“Fucking knew it,” Claire mutters, hitting her back against the bench seat as she slouches back down and her arms cross in front of her. “Knew it! Asshole.”

“There was no  _ time--” _

“What? Not you. What were you gonna do? God, even the touchy-feeliest person on Earth would have trouble responding to that, let alone… you know, you, being you,” Claire says, gesturing as if to some aura of emotional dumbassery surrounding Dean. “No, I’m talking about him. Castiel. Drops a bomb like that and then poofs out of existence? Says goodbye to nobody else? That’s him, at his worst, in a nutshell. Asshole.”

A laugh like a hiccup punches out through Dean’s mouth. She says it like it’s just this immutable fact, like this wasn’t yet another Dean Winchester failure, like he should be  _ allowed  _ to be pissed off and miserable instead of shoving it all down out of guilt.

He eases the car off the shoulder and back into traffic.

“Just for the record, literally everyone knew,” adds Claire. “The two of you, I swear, it was like the _ worst  _ will-they-won’t-they, rom-com-thing of all time. I kept expecting him to turn up and tell me he was marrying you or something gross like that. But hey. That’s why we’re gonna get him back, right? Kaia survived in the Bad Place for  _ two years. This  _ kind of story doesn’t end like this.”

Words tangle up in Dean’s throat at the way she phrases it. Something about that not seeming like the genre Chuck had in mind never quite makes it out. After all, nothing about Cas was what Chuck had in mind, it seems.

“Hey,” she says, apparently seeing his consternation, because she gives him a nudge. 

What she says next almost makes him crash into the trailer he’s been drafting behind. 

“I know I don’t act like it sometimes, but I think I’m starting to learn,” she prefaces. “Good things do happen.”

* * *

Under normal circumstances, the biggest weakness of a Dean-Claire teamup would be the imbalance. Normally they are both the  _ run-in-there-and-try-not-to-die  _ guy, not the  _ research _ guy.

They can’t even depend on their far-away  _ research guys, _ since the circle is just Dean and Claire and Jody for the time being. Sam’s definitely guessed, but bringing him in would be a bridge too far, confirmation-wise.

Once they stop driving for the night and are both swathed in the glow of their respective laptops, Claire even admits over a beer that she left  _ Kaia  _ in the dark, figuring the risk involved in drawing out the leftover grace might not go over so well. 

“What’d you tell her you were doing?” Dean asks. “Gotta have my story straight if anyone asks.”

“Y’know, I don’t think either of us are going to have anything _straight_ anytime soon,” Claire jokes with a conspiratorial smirk, (and somehow, just like that, she makes it sound so _normal_ ) “but I just told them it was a hunt, that we were helping out someone you and me both know. Best lies are mostly true, right?”

“And Jody agreed to that?”

She shrugs. “Truth’ll come out if we win, that’s what she said.”

“Fair enough.”

“Aha!” Claire says, nearly knocking over her bottle and catching it at the last second and sweeping it into a victorious sip. “Says here that places where angels died--”

“Hold on, hold on, says where?” They’ve barely  _ started,  _ what could she possibly have on The Empty so fast?

“Dude, I’m in  _ your  _ files. Well, the M-O-L server, anyway. Have you somehow not noticed your own brother meticulously photographing page after page of dusty-ass books for like… five years? Wait, are you not on the  _ network?  _ No, look, you are, here--”

Five years? Dean counts backward as she shows him how to access a networked folder that’s just been sitting here apparently since--

“He… might have mentioned…” Dean drowns the rest of that sentence in beer, because  _ he was a demon  _ when Sam started this project.

“Anyway, this is from a whole big book about angels, you might want to download this one if things go well, there’s some…” She coughs. “Some stuff you might be interested in. Says here that when an angel dies, they fall right _through_ that spot _into_ The Empty, and it makes a little hole in the world, if you can find it. Think you can _find the hole,_ Dean?” Claire chuckles at her own joke.

Jesus, it’s like looking in a 20-year time-warp mirror. If an apocalypse starts up anytime soon, he knows who his prime suspect is gonna be. “Yeah, but Cas didn’t  _ die  _ exactly. I mean, not the… glow-out, wings-on-the-ground kind of way.”

“Not this time,” agrees Claire. “Last time, though?”

“Last time, yeah.”

“You can find it again?”

“You’re kidding, right?” He just looks at her like she’s asked if he can tie his shoes.

Dean tries to give Claire the bed with the slightly less miserable springs, but she insists on taking the shitty one, because he’s  _ “like a hundred years old, if you sleep on that thing will you even be able to get up in the morning?”  _ which probably hurts more than the springs would.

When he wakes up before dawn, she’s already dressed, packed, and ready to go

The sunrise is at their back when she asks him, “When did you know?”

“Second time he died.” He doesn’t need to ask what she’s talking about, he reports grimly,  _ just the facts ma’am.  _ “We were undercover, Baby was in storage, I kept carrying his damn coat around. Sam asked me why I didn’t just leave it with the Impala. And…”

She laughs through her nose. “Light dawns over Marblehead.”

“You?” He glances at her. If he’s sharing, he refuses to do it alone.

“You fucking kidding? Love at first sight, man.”

“When’d  _ you _ turn into such a sap?” He ribs. 

“Like you don’t know. Yet another reason we gotta do this. It’s kind of fun, letting Kaia turn me into one of those idiots that thinks love can win. She’ll be pissed if you go and ruin all her hard work.”

“Well. Wouldn’t want to let Kaia down,” he agrees, gamely enough. 

There’s something kind of pleasant about it -- it’s not as if she hasn’t been doing her share of hunting, but her range is limited, and once they get outside it, he enjoys showing off his favorite spots along the road that carries them west. A whole chunk of his brain is reserved just for the spider-web of highways and the treasures hidden therein, from food to coffee to unbelievable views, and now he gets to hand some of that off to the next generation.

To her credit, she seems to get a kick out of it too. 

They even camp out, sort of -- he takes the front seat and she takes the back, once they’ve sat under the stars a while. He teaches her a little celestial navigation, to which she says,  _ “you know we have GPS now,”  _ and  _ “this is some real Oregon Trail shit.’ _

Still, the night after, she aces the pop quiz.

The beach on the coast is as beautiful as he remembers, and the memory itself is as painful. There was no hope, then, and not much more now, but a little is a little more than nothing. 

Claire gives him the vial on its chain. Neither of them has to ask if this is the exact spot: the scorch-marks are faded and disturbed, but unmistakable. 

“Obviously you’re the one going in,” she says. “If anybody can find him…”

Dean nods. (Besides: If he can accommodate an archangel, he figures this probably can’t hurt him.) 

He breathes in the grace like the plume of smoke it resembles, and it goes down surprisingly smooth. The last thing he thinks before Claire’s voice disappears is that he wishes he’d known how easy this would be.

* * *

“Castiel!” He shouts. Nothing. He focuses on Cas’ face, on the blue of his eyes, the tilt of his head, the breadth of his hand, the curl of hair just behind his ear. If Jack’s experience is any indication, a personal connection helps.

Nothing. 

Of course, that’s not really  _ him,  _ is it? No matter how much Dean’s finally admitted to himself that he enjoys those things.

Dean changes his strategy. Memories: Cas, pulling him out of Zachariah’s nightmare, with his cocky little  _ “We had an appointment.”  _ Cas, calling himself Emmanuel and remembering nothing, shattering Dean’s heart into a million pieces. Cas, in that stupid motel after his catastrophic attempt at a date, sleeping like a log. Cas, holding him back from his worst self  _ by force. _

Cas, saying  _ I could go with you,  _ even when  _ with you _ meant  _ to stab an ancient monster, _ or  _ to explode Amara,  _ or  _ to attack the devil,  _ or…

Well. What it so recently meant.

_ C’mon, man. Go with me, one more time. Please. _

“Cas!”

The darkness shifts around him in a way he can feel, but cannot see.

Cas is  _ there,  _ as if a veil has been pulled away, waking in an instant and scrambling to his feet, hand reaching for a blade that doesn’t come. Confusion sweeps across him, and the situation registers. 

“Dean?” Cas believes  _ so  _ easily it’s almost worrying, and then he realizes why: “What… you have my grace. How? I don’t--is this--”

“Doesn’t matter. You okay to blow this popsicle stand?”

“I… I can’t, not without it ejecting me, I can’t just--”

“Look at me, Cas.” Dean gets in his space, hand on his elbow. “We’re fixing this now. You and me. I’m here to… to pay you pack for the whole… raising-from-perdition thing, you got that?”

“Dean--” Cas’ face does something strange, an unreadable  _ twinge.  _ “You don’t  _ owe  _ me any--I’d still have to be--”

Dean’s not good at this. He’s terrified of a repeat of the last time he saw Cas, of not having the  _ time  _ to say what he wants, but he does know one way he can explain with efficiency.

He can explain later. 

Cas is in the middle of the word  _ human _ when Dean searches his face for any hint of a reason not to do this, finds none, and dives in. 

It’s a motion that falls somewhere between  _ dance  _ and  _ fight _ , one hand on Cas’ shoulder and the other climbing to cradle his jaw, the way he’s only ever done when Cas is dead, or close to it.

Though, maybe this counts in that category, too, technically.

When he was younger, he used to make a practice of hesitating  _ just  _ before he kissed someone new for the first time. It’s a classic tactic, providing a chance to correct if he’s misjudged, or let someone eager close the gap themselves. It’s win-win. It may have been awhile since he kissed  _ anybody _ , but old habits die hard, and this one apparently hasn’t died at all. 

Cas doesn’t recognize it for the  _ move _ that it is, and just stares in open confusion until he _ must _ be too close to see clearly, but then his hands stutter uncertainly up Dean’s sides. That’ll have to do. 

There’s a weird, startled moment where Cas just stands there like he’s made of stone, and Dean thinks he might have genuinely misread, but then: a rather spectacular beat of being kissed back complete with a little hitch of breath. It’s not exactly the smoothest this has ever gone, but if he’s sufficiently lucky, there’ll be opportunities to work on it.

With that, Cas pulls away, still looking like he’s not sure what just happened, like he’s trying to read something in an unfamiliar language. He is, for once, truly at a loss for words. 

“Look,” Dean says, “if you really don’t want to come back with me, that’s fine, but if you do, let’s  _ go.  _ I got a lot of shit to say, but I’d like to take my time, and I’m thinking the sooner we get out of here, the better. For now: I meant that, okay? So… maybe factor that into your decision.”

“Right. Something put The Empty pretty deeply to sleep. I have no idea what, or how… or even when, or how long it’s been, or permanent that is or isn’t. Our best chance is--Do you…” Cas clears his throat. “Do you... have an angel blade?”

“Do I ever not, anymore?” Dean produces one from the inside of his jacket and suppresses a joke about  _ protection. _

“For the record,” he says, blade poised over his neck, “I’m not sure if this is going to work.”

“What else is new?” Damnit, he can’t keep the smile off his face, despite everything. “Not like it can get any worse, right?”

Cas makes a small shrug of agreement and unceremoniously slits his own throat, which is alarming to watch but only opens a wound hardly bigger than a shaving nick. He picks up Dean’s hand and makes a cut across his palm. 

The grace bleeds out of both of them, not the usual gentle wisp, more like air rushing from a balloon into the void around them. It feels cold and when it’s gone, there’s a heaviness to Dean’s body that reminds him of climbing out of a pool.

Cas twines his fingers through Dean’s. They keep their eyes on one another, grounding, anxious, until the world cracks around them and seals behind them, like skin rejecting a splinter. If Dean were a betting man (and he is) he’d put down money that whatever Claire saw and what he saw probably didn’t look at all the same.

It was day, and now it’s night. It only felt like minutes, how long were they gone?

On the exhale, Cas collapses heavily against Dean, who goes down with him, unable to do much more than slow both of them on their trip to the ground and get his arms under Cas’ head.

“Cas! Cas!?” 

“Is he okay?” Claire scrabbles off the fallen log she must have been sitting on.

Fortunately, it’s little more than a classic faint. Cas is pretty much conscious by the time he gets to the ground.

“I apolog--Claire?” A line appears between his eyebrows. 

“Don’t act so surprised,” she says, voice tight with emotion, relief warm on her face. “Just so you know, I’m pissed at you, and Dean’s pissed at you. You’re gonna get lectured the whole way home and there’s nothing you can do about it. Let’s go.”

Cas’ eyes follow her, assessing, and then his attention extends to the environment as she stalks off toward the car. “Are we in… Washington?”

“Hey!” Dean shouts to stop her. He digs the keys out of his pocket and tosses them, not his best throw, but she catches it anyway. 

“You’re kidding.” She tries to suppress a giddy grin and fails miserably. “You’re _ not _ kidding. What happened to  _ not now not ever? _ ”

“Just… I gotta…” Dean gestures generally with the hand he’s not using to help Cas to his feet. “Don’t make a thing out of it. Try not to crash into anything, alright?”

Dean joins a loose-limbed, disoriented Cas in the back seat, abandoning all self-consciousness to pull him away from his rapidly increasing slump against the door.

“Hey. On me, not the window, you don’t need to crack your head the first time we go over a bump. You okay?”

“Oh,” is all Cas says at first. And then, gaze passing in and out of focus: “I think I just need some… some rest.”

“No hanky panky back there, kids,” Claire teases through the rear-view mirror, but once they’re on the road, that’s where her focus stays, much to Dean’s great relief. He should have known she’d take it seriously, given the chance.

He can’t help it: he watches Cas breathe the whole way to where they stop for the night. Dean turns Claire away from the first two motels they pass.

“I think we can spring for something a step above grime for the occasion,” he justifies, sotto-voice.

In the parking lot, while Claire goes ahead to get the rooms, he jostles Cas just a little. 

“Morning, sunshine.” Dean’s pretty sure it was around 2:30 AM last time he looked at a clock. “Can you walk to the room, or--?”

Cas’ nod leads to a slow, cautious detangling and a night-worker at the front desk who probably thinks they’re both sloshed. Claire gives Cas a gentle hug and disappears into her own room, in wordless agreement with Dean on the arrangement.

“As the newly resurrected, you can have the first shower,” Dean says when they’re alone. 

“Is that a rule?”

“Is now.”

While he waits, he orders Chinese from the only place open all night and mentally rehearses the edits he’s made to the things he plans to say now that he’s got Cas alone and safe. He’s almost glad they’re both tired, hard to be nervous when you’re this worn out.

“Dean,” Cas says, showered and pajama-clad, through a mouthful of sesame chicken, “I appreciate you coming for me, but--”

“But nothing.” It comes out half-scolding, which Dean feels bad for and thinks he’s earned, all at once. 

“Like I said. I hope I didn’t make you feel you had to do that. Truly, you don’t owe me anything.”

“Yeah, that’s not true. You did your talking, time to shut up and listen.” Dean puts his food down on the wobbly vinyl table and waits for Cas’ full attention, which he has, always, exhaustion or not. “I want to call you an idiot for saying that crap about what you  _ wanted that you couldn’t have,  _ but I’m an idiot too. I should have told you how I felt a long time ago. I just kept thinking… maybe angels can’t… feel like I felt. So I just… took what I thought I could get, you know?”

“I think I do.”

“And you were always leaving to begin with, imagine if I went and made shit awkward, what if you didn’t come back? All that brother stuff was… I don’t know, I guess I thought I was speaking your language or something.” 

Cas actually chuckles at that, a reaction that seems to surprise both of them.

“Point is: all that stuff you said, is… goes for me too. There’s no  _ can’t have.  _ You  _ have _ me, Cas. Been that way for a long time.” Dean takes his turn to laugh darkly at himself. “I just wish we hadn’t wasted so much of it.”

“I should tell you, as a human again, I’m afraid I won’t be able to help very much with--”

“Oh. Shit. No no no, we  _ won. _ Guess I should have led with  _ that. _ It’s over. Not that that would matter to me, but it’s over. Everybody, you and me, we can just  _ be  _ now. We’re free.” And now, Dean thinks, that finally  _ means  _ something to him. He doesn’t feel numb when he says it.

“Chuck?”

“Got the Metatron treatment, I guess. Jack’s the big cheese, says he’s  _ hands off, _ isn’t answering my prayers.”

“I suppose he makes a better god than most.” Cas’ attempt at self-deprecating humor pulls a tired smirk out of Dean

“I think Amara’s in there somewhere, somehow.”

“That explains The Empty, I suppose. The visions, the memories, they used to be terrible. Suddenly, everything was just… quiet. It must have been Jack’s influence, to whatever degree he was able to have any. Are you still angry with me?”

“Huh?” Dean realizes how tired he is, it takes him a second to catch up with what Cas said, preoccupied as he is with the fact that he’s  _ here,  _ in front of him, eating rice and wearing pajamas and being alive again.

“Claire said--”

“Right. Yeah. Well. You'll have to work things out with her on your own time, but I’ve got one more  _ deal _ for you. You know, a way to make it up to me, for saving my life in the most jackass way imaginable.”

“Oh?” Cas must have caught on that he’s joking a little, because a little smile picks up the corner of his mouth. 

“You gotta stay.”

“I...” Cas’ smile widens, crinkles his eyes in a way that makes Dean want to push his chair over and kiss him stupid. “I think that might be the best deal I’ve ever heard.”

* * *


End file.
